


Certainly

by Arianne



Category: Dialogues - Plato
Genre: M/M, Platonic Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arianne/pseuds/Arianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Surely all men have heard stories of the best and most beautiful man in Athens, and beautiful he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Certainly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [affabletoaster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/affabletoaster/gifts).



> I attempted to make this somewhat similar to the Dialogues in format, and tried to make the language as much like Greek translation as possible. I hope you like it, recipient!

What can I say of this meeting of Alcibiades and I? We discussed none of his philosophy, or even his occupation among the politicians, but had only the little talk one hears spoken between lovers. Certainly all men have heard stories of the best and most beautiful man in Athens, and beautiful he was. Oh, and noble and good and all the rest as well, the best and better than other men. For he was beloved of me, who made him so, so to speak. And this meeting began when like any other morning I, upon leaving my house intending for the agora and seeing him, called out his name, for I could tell he was looking for me, as he often did.

"Where are you going," I asked, leading him to the ground underneath a tree to sit with me as if he were still a boy, "and will you join me?"

"I will," he said, "I have just been on my way to see you."

Taking his hand as we reclined on the grass, I said, "You are always on your way to see something of me, though I must say even you are not often so bold as to seek me out in the agora."

"But is the love I have for you not the love of the agora, as they say?"

"Indeed it is, though I've tried to teach you otherwise."

"I don't believe you, for you have never once complained of my talents," he said. And so I still say he did not ever listen to me, though he claimed to, for I complained of his talents quite often.

I said, "And if your talents are what have led you to me, then truly you are anything to any man." For that is what the stories said, in those days when he was young.

"Certainly, Socrates, that is what the city says of me, though you say it with such indecency that I hesitate to admit to anything, lest you corrupt the words as you have corrupted me."

"So then, if I do such a thing," -- corrupting him, I mean, though anyone who had encountered him would assert he was quite like that without my influence, and some say it is what attracted me to him -- "what are you to me?"

"To you I am my best." He kissed me then, for he thought no-one would look.

"Yet still you are not as good as possible." He became quite serious, then, and pulled his hand away from mine, though I had chastised him only gently.

"Tell me, Socrates, how might I have been?" he said.

"I ask you this thing."

He was silent for a long while after this. "Do you have no answer?" I asked, for I had wished to make him better, though I had only shamed him. "Has so little changed since our night celebrating Agathon?"

"Our night, you say, as if we had shared anything more than a cloak by then."

"I do say, as it is then I saw your soul." In those days, long years since we had first shared blood at Potidaea, he still enjoyed such declarations from me.

"And what did you see?" he questioned me, though I daresay his expression was such that he took it as a confession of love.

"Ah, now you begin to ask the questions. I saw a man skilled of tongue," I said, for he liked these sorts of wordplays.

He turned from me then, and threw up his hands. "Skilled of tongue, he says, as though he had known it then! I believe I was not so willing," he said, and faced me once more, smiling with his own amusement. "I would hesitate to be so again, should you not tell me what you think you have seen in my soul."

I baited him, then: "I see a man whom I desire to see above all others in the city, including myself -- a flatterer, yes, but one otherworldly, and beautiful in body."

"Then you are no better than the other men! For you care only for my body."

"Not only, you being both beautiful and good. It is your mind I want, though perhaps you still will not give it to me."

"And will I? For perhaps I submit to you enough, pursuing you as I have."

"But that is with your body, that you pursue me. For in that you are as the lover, and I the beloved -- indeed you know more than I, in things such as these. But now," I said, "it is I who flatters you."

"But do you?" he asked me. "For I believe that you yourself say you know nothing. In this as well?"

"I do say this thing. But you, also, know nothing of your mind."

"So why do you wish to have it?" he said, feigning confusion as if he were an actor of comedy, as though we had not engaged in some type of this conversation at least once a summer throughout his youth, on the nights I would refuse to take him in body, which had been offered to me freely.

So I said to him: "You ask this, and yet, have you not answered all my questions as I desired?"

"Certainly, I think."

"You have, for you know my desires more than any other man. And still you like to think that you are the only man I have ever seen."

"If you do not like to think the same, perhaps I should take a proper beloved for myself. I would have bedded Agathon that night, as you know."

"As you know, so I would've also." I stood then, and offered him my hand, which he took.

"Again you try to manipulate me to your desires, knowing the passion of my jealousy," he said with the intimacy for which he was famous. "I am of a mind to have my way with you right now."

And to that I took his arm and, leading him back in the direction of my own house, I said, "So certainly you see, my dear Alcibiades, why I love your mind."


End file.
